Huge snowpack, blooming desert mark retreat of California drought

Rain-fed wildflowers have been sprouting from California's desert sands after lying dormant for years _ producing a spectacular display that has been drawing record crowds and traffic jams to tiny desert towns like Borrego Springs. (March 31)
AP

The signs that California is emerging from its brutal five-year drought are everywhere, from a whopping snowpack in the Sierra Nevada to a spectacular "super bloom" that is turning some deserts into rare and dazzling displays of color.

The snowpack along the 400-mile mountain range, which stretches north to south along the Nevada border, is critical to California's water supply. On average, it provides about 30% of the state's water needs as it melts in the spring and early summer, the state Department of Water Resources noted.

In its latest snow survey completed Thursday, the department found the snowpack for the entire Sierra Nevada was at 164% of average for this time of year. The northern region was at 147%, the central at 175% and the southern at 164%.

“The difference is visually stunning, but it’s the pattern of West Coast weather,” state snow survey chief Frank Gehrke said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “The winter weather in California is feast or famine. We have very dry years followed by extremely wet years.”

The snow was so deep this year at around 9,000 feet in the central Sierras that a CNN crew was not able to return to the spot they reached two years ago.

In Yosemite National Park, a kiosk at the top of Tioga Pass that was easily accessible two years ago is now completely covered in snow. "Except for the flagpole and the antenna, you would not know that there is a building there," said Gehrke, according to KTLA.

Frank Gehrke, right, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program for the Department of Water Resources, lifts the survey tube out of the snowpack depth during the manual snow survey at Phillips Station, March 30, 2017, near Echo Summit, Calif.(Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, AP)

At Phillips Station near Lake Tahoe, the latest measurement found the snow depth was eight feet, with water content at 183% of normal. That marked a sharp contrast from conditions two years ago, at the height of the drought, when Gov. Jerry Brown visited the same location and found no measurable snow.

The governor later ordered residents to sharply curtail their use of water at home. As hundreds of domestic wells ran dry, many people in rural farming communities and some Californians elsewhere had to drink bottled water and bathe from buckets.

While parts of California seldom fully escape the threat of drought each year, the latest U.S. Drought Monitor map shows severe drought clinging to a far southern sliver of the state, near Arizona, and an area of "moderate" drought from west of Santa Barbara to east of San Bernardino, including Los Angeles.

Thanks to a parade of moisture-laden snow and rain storms this winter, only about 8% of the state is now in a drought, a huge dropoff from the 82% at the beginning of the year.

One delightful sign of the retreating drought is a tourist boom in some desert towns from a rare "super bloom" of flowers. Towns like Borrego Springs, 85 miles northeast of San Diego, report record crowds and traffic from tourists eager to see the colorful carpet that only shows up every decade or so.

The show is expected to go on through May, as different flowers bloom at different elevations.

On the downside, the huge snow buildup prompted Los Angeles Major Eric Garcetti last week to declare a state of emergency for the region over concerns of that the melting in the eastern Sierra Nevada would threaten homes in rural areas of Owens Valley hundreds of miles north of the city.

The flood issue is frequently a tense one for Los Angeles, which surreptitiously bought rights to water in the valley and channeled it south more than a century ago. The emergency declaration cleared the way for the Department of Water and Power to spend up to $50 million to respond to any damage to public health and safety and to protect infrastructure and the environment.

“Although the record pace of the snowpack accumulation fell off significantly in March, California enters the snowmelt season with a large snowpack that will result in high water in many rivers through the spring," Michael Anderson, the state climatologist, said this week.